Dustin Lance Black shuts down radio caller who thinks two men ‘shouldn’t raise a child’

Dustin Lance Black had the best response to a radio caller who said he thinks two men “shouldn’t raise a child”. 

The acclaimed screenwriter announced he was having a baby with husband Tom Daley via surrogate earlier this year, and the couple have sadly been forced to defend themselves from bigoted criticism about their decision to become fathers from some quarters ever since. 

Black, 43, took over BBC Radio 5’s Live Afternoon Edition yesterday (March 27) to co-host an hour-long discussion on surrogacy, where he said negative responses to surrogcacy in the UK were fuelled by “misconceptions” about the process.

 

“We have made a decision to move forward on this with full transparency, and it at all possible shed some light on what surrogacy really is, what gay parenting really is”, he said.

“If it makes it easier for others going forward, we will do that.” 

Later during the show, a caller told Black that they don’t think two men could raise a child together.

After insisting they “don’t have an issue with gay people”, the caller said: “The only thing I don’t agree with is, it’s been eating away at me for a few years, is I don’t think two blokes can bring a baby up.

“You need the mother there. They are very different to us… they are very different, women.” 

Dustin responded by saying: “There are all different kinds of families out there in the world, and for many different reasons – some of them more tragic than others – children are raised by single parents all the time.

Dustin Lance Black (@DLanceBlack) speaks to a 5 live caller who thinks two men shouldn’t raise a child pic.twitter.com/D78MIyYrJH

— BBC Radio 5 live (@bbc5live) March 27, 2018

“Those children, I’d like to claim myself as one, who was raised by a single mother for some difficult reasons, and she raised me incredibly well.

“Will it be important that our son meets women in his life? Absolutely. That will be there. It would be wrong to deprive a child of that – and frankly bizarre and probably impossible.” 

Dustin, who wed husband Tom in May last year, also questioned why reactions to his surrogacy were more negative in the UK than in the US.

He said: “In the United States, where we’ve been working with our surrogate, the reception was incredibly warm with almost no exception.

“Perhaps that’s because it’s been going on a bit longer, is understood and has legal clarity around it. But here, we heard some things that weren’t so friendly, which suggested there were some misconceptions about what surrogacy is.

“That, to me, has opened this window that has shone some light on how the legal framework here might not be as helpful, as humane or as family-orientated as it is where I come from.” 

Black also confirmed that he and Tom would raise the child in the UK.

“We would like to raise our son here, but because of that we’re going to face some legal challenges in being considered the parents of our own child when we bring our son back to this country.” he said.

“It would be a much easier path if we decided to raise our son in the United States, but we love this country, and it’s home for us.

“Tom is incredibly proud to represent this country, so we are going to take the more difficult path of raising our son here.”